problem of require_once() with relative path.. is it a bug or normal behaviour

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so what i understood is position in require or anything is relative to where we are including the file not the actual position. RIGHT??

so, does it mean we should use absolute path because say we are including one file blocks/head.php which is relative to it. but it might not work if its not relative to index.php at the same path. RIGHT???

or should i use ini_set to reflect the different locations
or any other solution to work over this
thanks for the answer Mark.